Albania’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the government’s ban on TikTok violated freedom of expression and press freedom, handing critics of the restriction a legal victory after months of uncertainty over the platform’s future in the country.
The ruling, reported by AFP via France 24, says the interruption of access to TikTok amounted to a restriction on speech and the press. Journalists praised the judgment, while the Albanian Journalists Association described the original ban as a dangerous precedent. The court also said the case remained of public interest even though the government had suspended the ban in early February.
The government introduced the block in March 2025 after the fatal stabbing of a teenager in a fight linked to a social-media dispute. That incident prompted authorities to take the app offline, but the move quickly ran into legal and practical resistance. The journalists’ association, an investigative outlet and an NGO challenged the ban, arguing that it violated constitutional rights.
The evidence in the packet suggests the ban was always hard to enforce. Many Albanian users continued accessing TikTok through VPNs, and several interviewees said they hardly noticed the restriction at all. One communications student in Tirana said the app still worked by routing traffic through other countries. Another student said a single VPN app was enough to keep using it. Those accounts do not prove the policy was meaningless, but they do show how limited state control over internet access can be when users have easy workarounds.
Prime Minister Edi Rama also signaled that the government was not treating the issue as a clean victory. In a post quoted by AFP, he said the court effectively disagreed with most Albanian parents and teachers who had wanted the app shut down, while also arguing that TikTok had reopened only after making additional changes. That mixed message reflects a broader tension: governments may see platform bans as a fast answer to social harm, but courts can treat them as a serious constitutional question.
The ruling matters well beyond TikTok itself. By framing the ban as a restriction on both expression and press freedom, the court has set a limit on how far the state can go in responding to online harms through blanket platform shutdowns. The judgment does not end debates over youth safety, harmful content or data protection. It does, however, say those concerns cannot automatically justify sweeping restrictions on access.
The outcome also sits in a wider European context. TikTok, owned by ByteDance, faces regular criticism over mental health effects, violent or misogynistic content and addictive design. Several countries have acted against social platforms in recent years, and Australia’s under-16 ban was cited in the report as a global benchmark. But Albania’s case shows that even where policymakers want fast action, the legal test can be much tougher.
For now, the court has made one point clear: a near-year-long block on a major social platform is not just an administrative measure. In Albania, it was a constitutional issue.
